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Lings and Rockbass

For the last 2 summers all I have been able to catch are blackbass. It would be nice to see more variety. Not looking for anyones hole but I would appreciate any advice for how deep to fish. Maybe what depth to start or what range of depth to look for them. Thanks for any input.

Black Bass

Depth may have something to do with you success with Black rock fish. Also the closer you are to any developed port the more fishing pressure that known and commonly fished areas will see. The reason you are not catching yelloweyes, china rockfish, vermillions is because in those areas they most likley have already been caught. Since they live to well over 100, once they are fished heavily in one area, they will not be back in our lifetime.

Lingcod however do tend to move around and grow much faster than rockfish. If you are trying to catch lings and just getting rockfish, there is a good chance the lures or bait that you are using is too small. Lingcod like baits the size of a black rockfish or salmon. But on a huge scampi jig or the rack of a carcass os a filleted out salmon ( choose one that a rookie filleted so there is plenty of meat left on it.) I suspect if you lower that down you will find that there are some lings on most structures that hold the brown bombers.

Location, Location, Location

Black sea bass will be near rocky areas, Kelp beds, and sometimes open water. Ling cod are going to be caught near vertical dropoffs, pinancles, and under water hills, I've caught them in from 30' to 200' of water, but always near structure. I find good spots by watching the depth finder and marking any promising spots on the GPS while out fishing for other species.
Good Luck

Lings and yellow eyes

I find limits of yellow eyes almost every trip. Last year was able to pick up some lings but not every trip. Water depth has never kept me off yellow eyes. Caught some in 70 feet to 250. Structure is the key. When I feel the buzz bomb hitting rocks, that makes me happy. Hit the bottom, reel up 2 cranks and start mooching. B&J sells buzz bombs. Kinda spendy for one. 5 inchers are about $8 each. 3 inchers dont sink fast enough and if there is any current you will never hit bottom. Put them on steal leaders and throw away that expensive hook that comes with it and put on a cheap treable hook so that if you snag a rock you can straighten the hook and get it back.

Lings

I have also caught Lings in varying depths. Last year I was fishing for Halibut and would get a ling to hit about everytime I pulled up my rig to check the bait. They would hit anywhere from the bottom (200' at that place) to the top. I have also caught them under bait pods when trying to target salmon. Have had them follow blackbass up to the surface and we were catching the bass at less than 30'. The lings must have been hanging under them feeding.

I've managed some lings out of some really deep water, 550' to 450' on a couple of rock benches I like for halibut.

The more normal spots I fished are 70-150 fow. Would set up looking for humps along drops and finding any kind of bait, or bass and set up the drift accordingly. Worked great more often then not using big scampi jigs. Current wasnt an issue, playing with black bass all day was. Dont mind catching them on the way up, really stinks when you cant get gear through them, is the main reason for the big jigs.

Would also hold the boat over the structure drifting as slow as possible.

Think about your currents in the area and your tides. It's a big river basically and the fish will posiition accordingly, the strong the current or tides the more this is going to hold true. Lots of areas will be devoid of fish and some smaller areas will be loaded to the gills. By looking over the charts you should be able to get a good idear where to start looking!

aggressive fish!

There's a great picture in ProFishnSea's office in Seward of a big ling brought all the way to the boat by having grabbed onto a black rockfish that it refused to let go of. You can even see the lure in the rockfish's mouth. I understand it's not all that uncommon. On a ling/halibut combo with them, on a couple of occassions, two or three lings followed a hooked ling all the way to the surface. I was told you can sometimes get those other fish to hit if you have a jig ready to drop in front of them.

"The Gods do not subtract from the allotted span of men's lives the hours spent in fishing" Assyrian Tablet 2000 B.C.

legal?

On a charter (6-pack) halibut/ling trick we went on ot of Seward 3 out of 6 of us caught our ling on blackfish. We were using jigs and the captain told us to reel the blackfish about 3 feet off bottom and hold it there and then the ling would grab onto the fish and then u'd reel it up slowly and the captain would gaff the ling...I'm not sure if that is legal though since u don't actually "hook" the ling? The ling were caught at rocky reef structure full of blackfish.

Get a map and look for area that shoots up from the deep. I have found good areas where the water is 600 feet and on the map I see a small area that comes up to 200 feet. Once I find it on the map I check it out on my sonar. If I see bait fish then I go ahead and give it a shot

next time i'll know!

Thanks for clearing that up guys.....I thought that it was a bit "fishy".....me and my father's ling were actually caught on the jig, but I definitely did try the "bass bait" technique a couple times, but I only had one hit doing this which did not hang on. My father did not do it because he wanted meat and would just bring in the bass right away.

There are lots of good charters in alaska, but also some "shady" characters like this one who encouraged his customers to fish illegaly. We also had a bad guide(from a big charter service) on the Klutina who was horrible. He'd stop the raft and then wander off, sometimes for like 20 minutes and he had the net (maybe looking for bear tracks)? We complained about this character and the service said that " " is not coming back next year. The lazy bum also reduced the float from 12 miles to 4 miles w/o telling us. We were pretty angry that they were still using a guy who they knew they had problems with.

Your not allowed to use "sport fish" as bait, you are allowed to use fish that are not considered sport caught (pacific cod, fish that do not have a limit on them) black and grey rock (pelagic) fish have a 5 fish limit on them, atleast in Seward and are considered a sport caught fish. You are however allowed to use non edible sport caught pieces (like salmon heads/bellies/whole carcasses) and yes I know that some people eat them but not the vast majority of people.

Thanks again for all the input. I went to B&J's on sat. and then to the boat show. When I got home I pulled out all the tackle and started getting it ready. Starting to get the itch although its a tad early.

On a charter (6-pack) halibut/ling trick we went on ot of Seward 3 out of 6 of us caught our ling on blackfish. We were using jigs and the captain told us to reel the blackfish about 3 feet off bottom and hold it there and then the ling would grab onto the fish and then u'd reel it up slowly and the captain would gaff the ling...I'm not sure if that is legal though since u don't actually "hook" the ling? The ling were caught at rocky reef structure full of blackfish.

Thanks for clearing that up guys.....I thought that it was a bit "fishy".....me and my father's ling were actually caught on the jig, but I definitely did try the "bass bait" technique a couple times, but I only had one hit doing this which did not hang on. My father did not do it because he wanted meat and would just bring in the bass right away.

There are lots of good charters in alaska, but also some "shady" characters like this one who encouraged his customers to fish illegaly. We also had a bad guide(from a big charter service) on the Klutina who was horrible. He'd stop the raft and then wander off, sometimes for like 20 minutes and he had the net (maybe looking for bear tracks)? We complained about this character and the service said that " " is not coming back next year. The lazy bum also reduced the float from 12 miles to 4 miles w/o telling us. We were pretty angry that they were still using a guy who they knew they had problems with.

I'd guess he was off in the woods getting high, good guidees are hard to come by here mostly because guides don't make any money (thats why I quit guiding)